Saturday, 21 May 2016

Never-Before-Seen High Temperatures in India

Never-before-seen
high temperatures and high humidity are resulting in thousands of
heat injuries and hundreds of heat deaths across India. In some
places, wet bulb readings appear to be approaching 35 C — a level
of latent heat never endured by humans before fossil fuel burning
forced global temperatures to rapidly warm. A reading
widely-recognized as the limit of human physical endurance and one
whose more frequent excession would commit the human race to enduring
an increasing number of episodes of killing heat. A boundary that
scientists like
Dr. James Hansen warned would be exceeded if a human-forced warming
of the world was not halted.

*****

And
it is in this newly dangerous climate context that temperatures near
125 degrees Fahrenheit settled in over India’s border region with
Pakistan yesterday. A blistering wave of crippling heat hitting
never-before-seen readings over that highly-populated nation. In
Phalodi, India, the mercury rocketed to 123.8 degrees Fahrenheit (51
degrees Celsius). This reading exceeded India’s previous all-time
record high for any location which stood at 123.1 degrees Fahrenheit
(50.6 degrees Celsius) set
on May 25, 1886.
Across the border in Pakistan, temperatures crossed
“critical” thresholds this week,
hitting 124.7 degrees Fahrenheit (51.5 degrees Celsius) Thursday
in the city of Jacobabad as officials in that state issued health
warnings to the public.

(Temperatures
rocketed to 123-125 F along India’s border with Pakistan on
Thursday. These are the hottest temperatures ever recorded for this
region of the world. Image source: Earth
Nullschool.)

Closer
to the coast, temperatures rose as high as 107 degrees Fahrenheit (42
C). In the city of Surat, hospitals were strained by an influx of
people suffering from heat injuries. People afflicted with giddiness,
unconsciousness, dehydration, a bloody nose, abdominal pain, chest
pain, and other heat related injuries flooded local health care
facilities with emergency calls. As of Thursday, SMIMER
hospital had reported 1,226 calls related to heat casualties since
the start of May.

Local
Surat weather services reported periods when temperatures spiked to
38-42 C and humidity — supplied by moisture flooding off the
heating Arabian Sea — remained near 65 percent. These are wet bulb
readings in the range of 32 to 34.4 C — a combination of heat and
humidity that is very dangerous to anyone exposed for even brief
periods.

340
Heat Deaths in Delhi

Across
India, the story of heat casualties was much the same. Though no
official national estimate of heat related injuries or deaths has yet
been given, the current heatwave and related drought is far worse
than that experienced during 2015 when
2500 people lost their lives in the excessive heat.
But it’s reasonable to assume that heat injuries across India now
number in the tens of thousands with tragic heat deaths likely now
numbering in the hundreds to thousands.

In
the capital city of Delhi, reports were coming in that the homeless
population — swelled by farmers who lost their livelihoods due to a
crippling three-year-drought — was suffering hundreds of
heat-related deaths. As of Thursday, official estimates identified
340 total heat deaths among this increasingly vulnerable population.

Extreme
heat of this kind, wet bulb temperatures approaching 35 C, heatwave
mass casualties, and a never-before-seen drought are all conditions
related to a human-forced warming of the globe. Though El Nino,
during the 20th Century, brought with it a cyclical heat, a potential
monsoonal weakening, and an increased risk of drought, the severity
of the crisis now afflicting India is too great to be pinned on El
Nino alone. India has now suffered three years of delayed monsoons —
delays which began before the current El Nino took hold. Water levels
in the Himalayas are low due to a decadal warming that has forced
snow packs to retreat which has, in its turn, left India’s rivers
increasingly vulnerable to drying. And global temperatures hitting in
the range of 1.3 C above 1880s levels are absolutely adding intensity
to the current heatwave and dryness.